


But My Friends Used To Call Me Jesus

by jendavis



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Fix-It, Headcanon, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 23:55:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16799590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jendavis/pseuds/jendavis





	But My Friends Used To Call Me Jesus

Age 15: 

His beard's patchy and thin. Not completely grown in, and it won’t be for a while. 

He doesn't really know how to shave, yet, and Ms. Wyman, who oversees the place, doesn't really know how to talk him through it, and the toiletry donations have dried up since the holidays anyway. There's really not much to be done for it if he'd wanted to learn. 

He knows it makes him look like even more of a dirtbag than he already is, but the students who change, daily, into their uniforms from their rotating wardrobes of street clothes, remind him anyway. Not so much with words; if they're bothering at all, he's already gotten too good at tuning them out as he passes them in the hallway.

He kind of likes it, though. It's evidence, at least, that he's getting older, that at some point he'll be out of the home and off to who-fucking-cares. 

It's better than the nicks and cuts, at any rate. 

\--- 

Age 16:

Tyler- cute, perfect-haired, so-far-out-of-his-league-that-there's-no-point-trying _Tyler_ , who heads up the school's GSA and has the straight girls falling over themselves trying to make him their GBF- had sworn up and down this place didn't card. 

"Christ, kid. Come back once your beard's grown in," the bouncer smiles, amused, seeing through him with barely a glance, like he can read his mind. And maybe he can, because while Paul's standing there, trying not to die of mortification while talking himself into the notion that he still has about an hour before his bus transfer expires. At least he can make it back to the home, as long as he loiters in the park for a few hours until it's time to sneak back in during shift change.

He backs off from the doorway, trying not to look too hard at the pristinely clean-cut men striding confidently inside, and spots Travis, Colette and Max laughing as they run across the street towards the bar. Keeping his head down, he joins the rank and file of passerby, walking away from them before they can notice that he's there.

He lifts a travel kit from the corner store, but he pays for the coffee and takes it outside to wait for the bus. Less than three minutes later, an older man leans against the street sign and nods. He's chatty enough to set Paul's teeth on edge, and drunk enough to make him hang onto the coffee in case he needs to throw it- even if it's no longer scalding, it'll be a distraction- and by the time he wanders off, just as the bus is pulling up, Paul doesn't know if he's spent the last five minutes trying to explain that he didn't want to buy anything, or that he didn't want to _sell_ anything.

The next morning, he shaves it all off, only to find that he doesn't like the look of what's underneath.

\---  
Age 17: 

There's no GSA this year on account of the teacher layoffs, and with Tyler gone off to college, there's nobody popular enough to get one running without a sponsor. 

It's just another thing that's gone to shit this year. Six more kids at the home when there wasn't room for them in the first place, Max's body turning up in the park the way it did. The fucking _Ride Set_ assholes setting up shop on the corner out front of the home. 

He doesn't even know their names, but they've decided that they know his. 

"Hey!" the tall one with the shaved head crows, "Part the waters, my friends, _Jesus_ is here."

He sighs, leaning against the side of the bus shelter- not inside, only idiots who want to get cornered try that- and puts his earphones in. 

They're ripped out too easily, probably on account of their not being plugged into anything; these assholes had already taken the shitty phone he'd managed to get from the neighborhood association's Youth Internship Program last week. Which means he can hear them laughing as they claw at his neck and shoulders, fingers snarling in his hair as they yank the headphones free.

"Y'ain't even _listening_ to-" the short one- the one in the constantly new Jordans- clowns a face, angling it so his friends can see. "Shit, yo, they ain't even _plugged in!_

He just wants to go to school- or at least get on the bus and away from these assholes. But he fights, this time; for all he knows _he's_ the one who rips the earbud off of the wire. 

They all bound off, laughing their asses off as they roast Devin- or Donovan or some shit like that- for his bloodied nose. 

"That's what you get!" Jordans is shaking his head, still shouting. "Tryin' to fight Jesus, you get _smote_!"

\--- 

Age 18: 

He's got two jobs, none of which pay enough to save up for a security deposit. He passes out coupons for dollar-off sandwiches, or he does this: standing downtown with a clipboard emblazoned with Save our Seas, trying to get people to sign up for things they don't have time for. 

Most of them are ridiculously good at spotting the neon-blue clipboard from a mile away. Margie, the panhandler who he sometimes runs into at the church dinners on 7th, makes the same goddamned "It's like Jesus, parting the Red Sea" joke every time a suit sidesteps out of range. 

He's pretty sure that was Moses, but doesn't bother correcting her. 

An older man with a ponytail and a suit makes the mistake of making eye contact; two minutes later he's got him signing up for the mailing list, and he's got his wallet, too. 

Damn thing's empty.

\--- 

There's a bed open on 32nd if he can get there, but he doesn't have bus fare, it's snowing, and he needs to be at the warehouse by seven. The bridge camp ain't great, but Maurice and Desdemona have had a lock on the bridal suite for months now, and the noise from the cars passing five feet overhead isn't that bad, once you get used to it. 

He thinks, not for the first time, about calling Matthew, and seeing about crashing on his couch. But Missy's back in town, and the arrangement they'd had in the meantime has run its course. One more paycheck- he hasn't even cashed the last three yet, he's got them stashed in his locker at work- and he'll have enough to go in on that place with Shania. Just a week and a half, and-

It's dark, so it's hard to see, but nobody really waves around here anyway. Looks like Desdemona's up in her usual spot, smoking a cigarette. 

The old timer who usually sets up over on Polk Street waves at him from the mouth of his tent, twenty feet away. "Christ has returned!" 

He's gotten used to it. Nobody uses their real name down here anyway, old timer included. 

It's just easier, for a lot of reasons. You're not the same person out here as you are anywhere else. 

"Hey," he nods back, then starts up towards the drier part of the concrete embankment, eyes on the ground to avoid slipping on the ice or tracking through anything unpleasant, which is why he doesn't notice the car pulling up next to him until he sees a couple of burnouts flipping the bird in the glare of the headlights. 

"Hey," a deep, confident voice calls out through the open passenger-side window. "You working?"

He rolls his eyes, doesn't stop walking. "Yeah. First thing in the morning."

"You look like Jesus," the driver, younger than they usually are, says, with all the confidence of someone who's used to being heard. "What's it cost to save a soul?"

He's _tired_ and he's cold and he just wants to make it up to the suite to see if he can crash out for a few hours, and this asshole-

"Fuck off, Pig!" Maurice shouts- drunkenly- emerging from their alcove up above. By the time Paul makes it up there, ungloved hands scuffed from catching on the concrete, he's sat himself down at the mouth of the alcove. 

"Jesus," he says, with enough emphasis that this time, he might not actually mean Paul, though it's not like he's ever called him anything else. "They insist on doing stings every three days, they can at least mix up the fuckin' cars."

\--- 

Age 31:

He ships packages for people who have people to ship them to. He makes copies of resumes and lost dog posters and treatises demanding the end to capitalism for 25 cents a page. He's clean cut, now. Wears a polo shirt and slacks at work and mostly sticks to the same outside of it- it's not worth the arguments- and he's starting to realize that he doesn't really recognize himself any more. 

Andrew, though, he's decided that he does. He's been insisting that they move in together, and that Paul stop drinking, and that everything would just work so much better if Paul just found a job that paid better and didn't have him working so many nights and weekends. 

He doesn't get how steady it is, or how _important_ that is. Or how for every shitty week, there's a day where he actually gets to feel useful for a minute, like he's here at all. 

Probably because Paul's never explained it. Because if he started, he'd have to tell him _everything_ , and Andrew? 

He wouldn't get it. He'd try, though, and somehow, that just makes the idea even worse. 

They break up. They were probably always going to, but Andrew fucking around on him with his college buddy definitely puts a pin in the whole thing. 

A year later, though, he's signing up for instructor training at the dojo and he thinks about him. He doesn't really know why. 

\--- 

Age 36:

It's funny, the way the world ended. Who survived, and who didn't. Used to be he was just a fucked up individual with a dodgy past, but the shit he'd manage to pick up back then feels like _currency_ , now. 

There are people who are willing to do worse things than he is; these, he avoids.

There are people who insist that they can rebuild society from the ashes, as long as they all work together; these, he tolerates. And he keeps watch. 

Gregory's a snake, and he barely bothers trying to hide the fact. He's boorish enough to make the usual Jesus joke, but canny enough to realize how irritating Paul finds it. 

And Gregory's already got everything he wants: safety, shelter, and people willing to let him freeload off of their efforts. There's no reason for him to change. There is, however, reason for him to get _worse_.

Fucking _Negan_ on one side, and a community full of people who are too, for all their faults, too kind, too _good_ on the other. And Gregory, right there in the middle. 

It's a bad combination. It's going to go to hell, and Paul should get out. 

There's just nowhere else to go, and when it comes down to it?

He knows what it is to fight for a place, even if you don't particularly _like_ it there.  
\---

Age 37:

Something about the angrier one makes him want to poke at him, it's like an itch, sudden and inexplicable. 

"Paul Rovia," he says, spreading out his arms, crucifying himself. "But my friends used to call me Jesus. Your pick."

\---

Age 37, maybe 38:

He doesn't know when his birthday is, not exactly. The calendar project's been slow going, mired down in arguments from two outdated almanacs and the fact that nobody here knows enough about astronomy to get any use out of the book that Georgie'd given them. 

But the temperature's about right. Maybe he's missed it already, maybe not. Could be today, for all he knows. 

And wouldn't that be ironic. 38 years to the date, dying on his birthday. Wrapping him up all pat and neat like his life never did. 

He can hear Daryl and Aaron shouting, still fighting. He forgot what he wanted to tell them, 'cause he doesn't know if they _know_ -

-but it just hurts, too damned much, he's too busy _dying_ \- 

-and he never really knew how to do it. How to talk when it meant something, how to say what he means. 

It's all a lot more distant than it had been a second ago, anyway, and it's only getting farther.

\---

Age 38 (Probably, by now):

He's coughing, and it _hurts_ , wracking his ribs and tearing his lungs and throat and there's a hand on his chest, on his shoulder, and it's not much but it's something else to focus on as he tries to catch his breath. 

" _Jesus_ ," Daryl grumbles, voice low, which helps, because it's too dark to see much of anything; he can't tell whether it's late or early. "Don't do that shit, all right?"

"That's my name," he croaks out, surprised enough that he can that he's not too concerned about the delivery. "Don't wear it out."

Daryl snorts. Doesn't say anything more, just keeps scowling at him like it's something he's used to doing. 

Which. He is, but not usually for this long. 

There's a chime, somewhere deep in the building; they're at Hilltop. He thinks he knew that already; he can't remember lying here, though.

"Siddiq's on his way," Daryl says, like he's going to get up to move out, watch duty done, but he just keeps looking at him. 

Right. Because he's.

"I'm alive," he says, struck belatedly with the realization; it's followed immediately with too many questions to verbalize, enough that the need to ask them is blocking out the _air_ , and he needs to-

"Shh. Eugene, Aaron, everyone's ok. We got you out- just stay there, all right?"

He eases back against the pillow-his head doesn't have far to go, he hadn't managed to move all that much. 

Daryl's hand is on his shoulder, just a warning. That he'll hold him there if he fights him on it. As if he could. 

Everything hurts. He's weirdly euphoric anyway. 

"How long was I..." Two breaths, in and out. 

"Five days, in and out."

"Too bad I couldn't make it three." Not quite deep enough; he needs a third, a fourth. "Do it up right."

He tries to move his arm, realizes, in doing so, that Daryl's releasing it. "Just get yourself upright, deal with the other shit later. Want me to go find Aaron?"

He shakes his head, not really knowing why he's asking. Sure, Paul would like to see that he's all right with his own two eyes- Eugene too- he just doesn't have the energy right now. 

Now that he's got his hand free, he doesn't know what to do with it.

When he puts it down again, he finds Daryl's, already there.


End file.
